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one course in film theory
a minimum of two courses taken outside the
student’s degree-granting department and college
a minimum of two courses with an international or intercultural focus
*
Category notations are specified at the end of each course description.
N.B. For a complete list of Graduate Film
Studies Certificate requirements, please visit www.umass.edu/film
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COMM 691D: SPECIAL TOPIC-MEDIA LITERACY AND
COMMUNITY MEDIA
Prof. Demetria Shabazz Machmer Hall RM 313B dshabazz@comm.umass.edu
40207 TuTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM Machmer
Hall room E-10 Cap 10
This course involves preparation for and the implementation of an in-school and after school media literacy program with middle school children. Course content will focus on 1) basic elements of the program (critical thinking, definitions of race, ethnicity and their impact on ideas about culture and identities, citizenship, stereotypes, media literacy, and community media production), 2) politics of testing and profiling in Massachusetts primary and secondary education, 3) dynamics of power in naming and defining (non) white racial and cultural identities, 4) techniques for teaching and discussing material with middle schoolers. This course involves the theory and application of community service learning, as pedagogy and as practice. The conceptual focus of the class is on engaged learning and global citizenship in the context of a mediated environment-and particularly with regard to mythologies of race, ethnicity and nationality as they impact community members. Graduate students will work with a longstanding partnership between the Communication Department and a local middle school, called the Media re-Envisioning Program. The program includes a sequential in-school (6th grade) and after-school (6-8 grade) curriculum. We will take what we learn beyond the classroom by teaching and learning from kids about representations of race, ethnicity, and nationality within the media and how it impacts society. In addition we will help guide and prepare the middle-school students to create their own short programs for broadcast on Amherst Community Television. Graduate students will work with undergraduate students to prepare and implement the program and will be responsible for a research project connected with the program. Permission and admission to enroll will be granted on the basis of instructor consent. Readings in the course will draw from Critical Race Theory in Education, Community Service Learning and Civic Engagement, Critical Pedagogy, Puerto Rican Cultural Studies and Interracial Communication (among other areas). TO ENROLL PLEASE CONTACT PROF. DEMETRIA SHABAZZ at dshabazz@comm.umass.edu or by phone at 545-5770
UMass Graduate Certificate
course: general
Dept/College: Communication / Social & Behavioral
Sciences
COMM 791V: SEMINAR-MEDIA
HISTORIOGRAPHY
Prof. Shawn Shimpach 410 Machmer shimpach@comm.umass.edu
38942 Th 7:00PM - 10:00PM Machmer
Hall room 413 Cap 15
This seminar considers some
of the significant theoretical and methodological issues that attend to the
writing of media history. The
semester will be divided into thirds.
The first third will consider theories of historiography, querying
general questions of "fact," "evidence,"
"interpretation," and "narrative" as well as questions more
specific to media history regarding technology, representation, social history,
popular memory, experience, and identity.
These will be drawn from the academic fields of history, cultural
studies, and philosophy. The
second part of the course will examine a number of recent writings in media
history to be considered both for their subject matter and the theories that
inform them. This section will
focus on histories of the emergence of new media, from the printing press to
film, broadcasting, and the internet.
In addition to questions of method and theory that inform these
examples, we will consider how such examples in turn offer "lessons"
that inform contemporary debates over policy, regulation, morals, influence,
and meaning. The final part of the
semester will be devoted to in-class student presentations of their research
project, developed in consultation with the instructor. Students will be assessed on their
class attendance and participation, in-class presentation of selected readings,
a written historiographic analysis of a body of media studies writing, and a
final research paper. (Course capacity is 15)
Course Eligibility*: Open to Masters and Doctoral
Communication Graduate students, others by permission of instructor.
UMass Graduate Certificate
course: general
Dept/College: Communication / Social & Behavioral
Sciences
COMLIT 695A INTERNATIONAL FILM NOIR
Prof. Don Levine
32625 W 3:35-7:35, Herter 222 Cap 20
Lecture. Often referred to as the only
indigenous American film style, "film noir" in its very appellation
reveals that its major effects (for certain modern conceptions of cinema) lay
elsewhere. We will examine film
noir in its American heyday (1945-1957) and how it came to be a major
propelling force in the new European cinema of the 1960's (Godard, and the Cahiers
du cinema). How film noir
displaces American social mores and their constitution of "reality"
within the imaginary and symbolic fields, and within the symptomatic
concretization of those fields that is normative (dominant) cinema. How film noir both makes film different
and allows already latent difference to be manifested. How film noir takes shape in the
U.S. as expression of the inexpressible (and the ÔunheimlichÓ) or, at least, of
the allusion to it; which in the lens and on the screen of directors such as
Godard and Fassbinder becomes pseudomorphic, presenting a critique of American
imperialism both public (political) and private (psychic) Ð the American way of
death and love (or, as the title of one work would have it, Love & Napalm:
Export USA). Films by: American
directors such as Aldritch, Ray, Fuller, Kubrick, Welles; Foreign agents such
as Lang, Ophuls, Siodmak, Sirk, Von Sternberg; European directors such as
Godard, Fassbinder, Wenders.
Note: undergrads with previous film
experience may register with instructor permission.
UMass Graduate Certificate
course:
ÒInternational/interculturalÓ category
Dept/College: Comparative Literature / Humanities
& Fine Arts
GERMAN 691F - 01 S-INTRO TO GERMAN FILM STUDIES
Prof. Barton Byg
39780 TuTh 9:30AM - 10:45AM location TBA Cap 20
This course provides an
overview of the principal, critical, and historical issues treated by German
film studies as the field has developed since the 1970s. The "canon"
of film movements and critical/historical texts will be introduced, as well as
challenges to the idea of a "canon" or of a national cinema as a
principal focus of study. The field of film studies itself will also be
discussed as a phenomenon of cultural history. By studying a variety of film
genres, students will gain practice in key methodological approaches
(historical, psychoanalytic, feminist, formalist, queer, semiotic, etc.), and
will become familiar with the resources and methods available to create their
own undergrad film course syllabi.
Conducted in English.
Undergraduates admitted by permission of the instructor.
UMass Graduate Certificate
course:
ÒInternational/interculturalÓ category
Dept/College: Comparative Literature / Humanities
& Fine Arts